Stevie Wonder is taking 'Songs in the Key of Life' on 50th-anniversary tour

Stevie Wonder performs in this undated photo. Wonder's 18-date tour celebrating his album "Songs in the Key of Life" will kick off in Birmingham, England, on Oct. 13.

Stevie Wonder performs in this undated photo. Wonder's 18-date tour celebrating his album "Songs in the Key of Life" will kick off in Birmingham, England, on Oct. 13. (Taylor Hill, Getty Images via CNN Newsource)


Save Story
KEY TAKEAWAYS
  • Stevie Wonder announced a 50th-anniversary tour for "Songs in the Key of Life" on Wednesday.
  • The tour begins Oct. 13 in Birmingham, England, and ends Dec. 19 in Los Angeles.
  • The album topped charts in 1976 and earned a Grammy for album of the year.

NEW YORK — Stevie Wonder is bringing "Songs in the Key of Life" back to the stage this fall, 50 years after its release.

The 25-time Grammy winner announced a U.S. and European tour in an Instagram post Tuesday, celebrating the anniversary of his landmark 1976 album, which he will perform in its entirety at each show.

The 18-date tour will kick off in Birmingham, England, on Oct. 13 before making stops across Europe, including Paris, Copenhagen, Amsterdam and London.

The U.S. leg will begin at New York's Madison Square Garden on Nov. 19, followed by shows in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Detroit, before wrapping up at the Intuit Dome in the Los Angeles area on Dec. 19.

Presales began at 10 a.m. local time on Wednesday, Sept. 9, with general sales for most U.S. dates opening at the same time on Sept. 10. General sales for dates in Europe and the U.K. open on Sept. 11.

After "Songs in the Key of Life" was released in September 1976, it topped the charts for 14 weeks and spawned two No. 1 hits, "I Wish" and "Sir Duke."

The record earned Wonder his third Grammy for album of the year and was added to the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry, which annually selects 25 recordings based on their cultural, historical and aesthetic significance to American life for preservation.

The 21-track record also includes songs such as "Isn't She Lovely," "As" and "Pastime Paradise," which was later sampled in Coolio's 1995 hit "Gangsta's Paradise."

The anniversary shows will mark Wonder's first full tour since his 2024 "Sing Your Song! As We Fix Our Nation's Broken Heart" series of U.S. concerts.

The 76-year-old musician was born in Saginaw, Michigan, in 1950. He was just 11 when he signed to Motown's Tamla label, and he scored his first Billboard Hot 100 hit at 13 with "Fingertips."

Wonder was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1989.

In 2024, on his 74th birthday, Wonder was granted Ghanaian citizenship by then-President Nana Akufo-Addo.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

Most recent Entertainment stories

Related topics

Arina Porkhovnik
    KSL.com Beyond Series
    KSL.com Beyond Business

    KSL Weather Forecast

    KSL Weather Forecast
    Play button